French Motormouth

The Covid lockdown over, I take the ferry to France and head on to the motorway.

After a while, hunger forces me to stop at the Aire de Bretonneux, a gas station with a sandwich shop. Proud to be able to use my school French, I order a sandwich.

‘Take-away or sit-down?’ These are the only words I can filter out of the waterfall of words the woman behind the counter aims at me. She speaks like a machine gun, a French motormouth!

I mimic her, be it several kilometres per hour slower, ‘Sit-down, s’il vous plaît.’

‘Avez-vous une carte sanitaire,’ she fires back at me.

I’m baffled.

I’m getting on in age, and I’m perfectly aware of that, but I didn’t know that one needs to attest one still has all of one’s sanitary facilities here in France.

My bafflement obvious, and impatient as she is, she repeats what she asked about the sanitary card. Same machine gun speed, but louder this time. I’m convinced she exists in a parallel dimension, somehow connected with ours. People here can speak at supernatural speed. By now, my bafflement doesn’t allow any production of school-French words at all.

‘Avez-vous une carte sanitaire,’ she says again. A lot louder this time, as if increasing the volume will also increase the possibility that I suddenly, magically, will produce a card that will prove that I can be trusted to go to the toilet on my own.

I feel my face burn red hot while I desperately try to formulate a sensible French sentence to inquire why I need a sanitary card to eat my sandwich. But she’s way ahead of me and blocks my efforts by screaming the same sanitary words, again, and again.

This screaming actually saves me; her colleague looks up. This one seems to be more at ease in the bafflement department. She points at a tiny flyer pinned low on the wall next to Motormouth.

It says, ‘Ici Pass Sanitary obligatoire.’ Underneath it, there’s a translation, ‘European Covid Certificate mandatory.’

by Marc Gijsemans